Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook review

Wired rating

Wired

Tired

Odd keyboard layout, not cheap

Price

£1,800

The third incarnation of Lenovo's X1 Carbon comes with an
improved HD+ screen and a few new innovations, including an
adaptive keyboard that changes depending on which app you're using.
But it might have been even better if that was the only change
they'd made to the keyboard.

Chassis and screen
The new version follows the tried and tested Lenovo Ultrabook
styling, with a sleek carbon fibre casing that tapers from 20mm to
an extremely svelte 14mm. It certainly feels tough enough for
standard duties and it's extremely lightweight too at just 1.27kg
-- Lenovo claims it's the lightest 14-inch Ultrabook available.
Like the previous incarnation, the screen tilts through 180
degrees, so you'll always be able to find the right angle.

The 14-inch touch screen delivers a pixel count of 2560x1440 --
way beyond plain old 1080p full HD -- and it looks stunning. Plenty
of detail of course, but the colours are vivid without being
saturated and the contrast levels are high. Viewing angles are
pretty good too, which is handy for showing it off.

The screen is good but the keyboard is more of a curate's egg.
First the good bit. Instead of the traditional row of function keys
at the top, Lenovo has included an adaptive LCD strip, which
displays different backlit functions depending on which app you're
using, with four different types. So when you move from the home
version to launch your browser you get buttons like page-back,
refresh and new tab. When you're using a media player you'll see
volume, display brightness, search, cloud storage, gesture control,
and voice recognition. And for video calls with Skype and other
apps you'll get microphone and camera settings.

The keys feel deep, even quite luxurious for an Ultrabook, but a
couple of them have been mysteriously moved around or removed
altogether. The backspace key for instance is a small one placed at
top right next to the delete key. Since most of us touch typists
expect backspace to be a larger button beneath delete, this is
likely to lead to some confusion while our muscle memory learns the
new regime. The caps lock key has also been replaced by two small
home and end keys. You can get caps lock by double tapping the
shift key but it's still very odd, and a pain in the digits.

Processor and performance
The 4th gen Intel Core i5-4200U processor held up pretty well
considering it's got that powerful screen to run, though that
wasn't necessarily reflected in our benchmark tests. It delivered a
PC Mark score of 2214, which isn't exceptional. Conversion of our
ten-minute test film took 4 mins 25 secs, which is a little on the
slow side and while playing Portal, it delivered rather poor frame
rates of 75fps. Stats aren't everything of course and in use it
generally felt nippy enough -- it'll certainly deliver all you'd
expect from general use.

The battery lasted pretty well but wasn't exceptional. We got
five and a half hours of constant use from it on test, which puts
it behind the long-lived likes of the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus.

Conclusion
The latest Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon is a pricey Ultrabook - no
question. For your money you get an incredibly sharp screen and a
tough, lightweight case, plus a few additional bells and whistles
like the adaptive keyboard. But you also get a frustratingly obtuse
keyboard design and a less than exceptional processor. It's
certainly worth a look, but you'll need deep pockets and an open
mind.